The grants are intended to help homebuyers who may struggle to save enough for a down payment. Even though low mortgage rates and home prices have made homes more affordable, most loans now available to first-time homebuyers require a down payment of at least 3.5 percent.

“That’s a lot of cash out-of-pocket for first-time homebuyers,” said Peg Malloy, director of the

. For a family of four, that's $83,300; three, $75,000; for a couple, $66,650; and for a single person, $58,350.

They must either be pre-approved for a mortgage from an approved lender — Wells Fargo, Chase, HomeStreet Bank, Umpqua Bank or Key Bank — or seek pre-approval from Wells Fargo at the event.

They’ll also have to take an eight-hour homebuyers course at the Portland Housing Center, and they’ll need to stay in the home for five years to avoid repaying the the downpayment assistance.

Like many major banks, Wells Fargo — and the former Wachovia, which Wells Fargo bought in 2008 in a government-brokered deal to avert Wachovia's failure — has taken a share of the blame for the housing crisis. Most recently, the bank announced it would pay $335 million to settle claims it misled investors into buying risky mortgages before the housing collapse. It was also one of five banks to take part in a $25 billion settlement in 2012 over faulty foreclosures.

The bank said that although it has wrapped similar homebuyer aid programs into such settlements at the behest of the federal government, this one is unrelated.